If Far Cry works why not Battlefield 2...

[jay75]

I have a "GeForce Ti 4400", P4 2.4 Prescott, 512 MB RAM. Far Cry plays really well, very similar to screen shots found in gaming websites. The environment is fantastic, the water spalshes when shot at, there's lots of grass, vehicles are shiny metal and the explosions are good(pictures at the end of message). All this at decent frame rates around 30.

Battlefield 2 does not look close to what Far cry is(in web screenshots), yet it makes such great demands for Video card capability. The fact that you need to run TatniumD3D in order to play with a geforce 4(preventing medium and high terrain), indicates that the game is intentionally preventing you from playing with certain older cards based on their name and not their capability. It allows you to select "high" texture but not more than "low" terrain.

If such detail can be shown in "far cry" why not battlefield? They seem to be forcing us to "upgrade" to an expensive video card.

here are shots of far cry and battlefield 2 taken with my geforce 4400. Pictures

 

[Lasthitlarry]

A lot of people are having problems with BF2, not only hardware, but connection problems. There is still a lot to be patched though. The main problem I see is that the actual video card being used isn't DirectX9 hardware compatible.

I don't know much about it, but that is something of what I have heard.

 

[jay75]

the radeon 8500 is definitely not dx9.
so...?

 

[imported_Traxis]

The 8500 has Pixel Shader 1.4 support, GeForce 4 cards don't

 

[Lonyo]

Yup, BF2 requires PS1.4, Geforce 4 and lower only has PS1.3 support.
Someone is apparently trying to re-write some shaders to work with PS1.3 I believe, but, well, you sometimes just need to upgrade if you want tplay the latest and greatest.

 

[jay75]

ok pixel shader 1.3 takes more passes, but it still lets far cry look and play great, why not battlefield 2?

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Yup, BF2 requires PS1.4, Geforce 4 and lower only has PS1.3 support.
Someone is apparently trying to re-write some shaders to work with PS1.3 I believe, but, well, you sometimes just need to upgrade if you want tplay the latest and greatest.

i think he kinda just said it.

 

[Randum]

dont worry too much, i think bf2 looks kinda crappy anyways, im maxed out settings on a x800pro...youre not missing too much...i mean its better but..its not knock you down Far Cry Gorgeous

 

[n0cmonkey]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=33&threadid=1624543&enterthread=y

 

[jay75]

Originally posted by: rise4310

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Yup, BF2 requires PS1.4, Geforce 4 and lower only has PS1.3 support.
Someone is apparently trying to re-write some shaders to work with PS1.3 I believe, but, well, you sometimes just need to upgrade if you want tplay the latest and greatest.

i think he kinda just said it.

ok, what did he say...
someone is apparently trying to rewrite some shaders.

is this going to become a trend? someone else has to come and fix stuff up. stuff which according to "randum" still doesn't look as good as far cry anyway, so pixel shader 1.4 isn't really doing anything great, just forcing an unnecessary upgrade.

 

[pkananen]

no, creators of bf2 were too lazy to code for cards that use ps 1.3. They could have if they wanted to, but they were too lazy

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: pkananen
no, creators of bf2 were too lazy to code for cards that use ps 1.3. They could have if they wanted to, but they were too lazy

they actually coded something?

 

[networkman]

Maybe they're just taking a page out of the Microsoft operating manual and forcing people to upgrade whether they want to or not.

 

[pcmax]

Originally posted by: pkananen
no, creators of bf2 were too lazy to code for cards that use ps 1.3. They could have if they wanted to, but they were too lazy

Oh it's not laziness, try greed. Wonder how much kickback Nvidia gave them for it

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer

Originally posted by: pkananen
no, creators of bf2 were too lazy to code for cards that use ps 1.3. They could have if they wanted to, but they were too lazy

they actually coded something?

I'm surprised by that too. I thought someone took BF 1942 + DC mod, crapped in a box, then sold it to me.

 

[sandorski]

Far Cry uses the shaders available with the Geforce 4s, BF2 doesn't. [/thread]

 

[JackBurton]

For the love of Christ, get rid of that sh!tty card already.

 

[jay75]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
For the love of Christ, get rid of that sh!tty card already.

goddammit!!!
it is not a sh!tty card. check out my far cry pictures. you're judging the card by its generation and not by its true ability, which makes you gullible to marketing hype and unnecessary expenses.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: jay75

Originally posted by: JackBurton
For the love of Christ, get rid of that sh!tty card already.

goddammit!!!
it is not a sh!tty card. check out my far cry pictures. you're judging the card by its generation and not by its true ability, which makes you gullible to marketing hype and unnecessary expenses.

Play Far Cry then and be happy. EA or anyone else isn't obligated to make their games work for it though, so accept it.

 

[jay75]

Play Far Cry then and be happy. EA or anyone else isn't obligated to make their games work for it though, so accept it.

Thats a cop out!
So much for quality and customer satisfaction. EA or Dice may not be trying for these things, but Ubisoft and Crytek certainly are.

To be fair, its not an EA problem, The Sims 2, is a fantastic game and so are others, but the problem is with battlefield 2, for which nobody can put up a proper argument, without basically copping out and telling people to live with it.

Heck, I want to play battlefield 2 also, but without unnecessarily and wastefully(i hope people still understand that word) having to spend $150 extra.

 

[nsafreak]

Well Jay the main problem here is your card is two generations out of date. I would say there's a good chance that as time passes there will be even more games that your card is simply not going to be able to play. Battlefield 2 is just the beginning and I'm sure there will be more games in the future that you will not be able to play without a card upgrade.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: jay75

Play Far Cry then and be happy. EA or anyone else isn't obligated to make their games work for it though, so accept it.

Thats a cop out!
So much for quality and customer satisfaction. EA or Dice may not be trying for these things, but Ubisoft and Crytek certainly are.

To be fair, its not an EA problem, The Sims 2, is a fantastic game and so are others, but the problem is with battlefield 2, for which nobody can put up a proper argument, without basically copping out and telling people to live with it.

Heck, I want to play battlefield 2 also, but without unnecessarily and wastefully(i hope people still understand that word) having to spend $150 extra.

Not a cop out, just the way things go.

I have a Voodoo5 5500 that could run many games fine, but wasn't supported. You can't expect game makers to spend all their time on coding for every possible hardware configuration, they have to draw the line somewhere and in this case the GeForce 4 cards fell on the wrongside of that line.

 

[boran]

hell, doom 3 works on a voodoo 2 (google it) ugly, but it works. so I dont see what prevented EA from including a DX8 mode to run their games in. this excludes quite a bit of people because the GF4 is more common than you might think because you can still play every other recent game at not too shabby settings. I for one am not getting BF2 because it's not my game, but if this trend continues PC gaming looses a main asset, which is that older hardware can still play newer games albeit with crappy visuals.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I hope they eventually get the TatniumD3D workaround fully going some day.

Notably

[*] the "rainbow effect" when you get stunned (grenade goes off, tank round hits wall near you, etc)
[*] the screwed up minimap
[*] artifact like geometry errors in the middle of a game.

I can live with textureless buildings and green water, but the rainbow thing is a pain in the ass. It's one of the only two problems that affect gameplay noticeably.

I'm not paying $150 to upgrade my backup loaner computer for a LAN party JUST for one game.

IMO, the "minimum" specs are inflated. It plays smoothly on a

[*] 1.2GHz Athlon thunderbird
[*] 384MB PC133
[*] GF4 Ti 4400

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: jay75

Originally posted by: JackBurton
For the love of Christ, get rid of that sh!tty card already.

goddammit!!!
it is not a sh!tty card. check out my far cry pictures. you're judging the card by its generation and not by its true ability, which makes you gullible to marketing hype and unnecessary expenses.

Marketing hype? That pic looks bland. For some reason Far Cry looks much better using my 6800GT. Maybe it's just the "marketing hype." :roll:

Now get rid of that sh!tty card.